A unique book discusses Krishna and Vrindavan in contemporary times

Hawley draws a contrast between Krishna in Vrindavan and Krishna in later years, for instance, at the Kurukshetra battlefield advising Arjuna on the ways of the world or even later in Dwaraka

John Stratton Hawley is a professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. In the research that he has undertaken over several decades, the septuagenarian professor’s focus has been largely on the religious life of north India and Hinduism. In 2016-17, he was a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, principally resident in Vrindavan, a small town of about 75,000 people in Uttar Pradesh and just about 160 km south of New Delhi.

That year, however, was not when Hawley made his first visit to Vrindavan, a town that boasts of hundreds of temples and where Krishna, the Hindu god and incarnation of Vishnu,